Graveyard Shift The 10 Best Art-Horror Films to Start With

List Rules Art-horror film lovers: vote up the film you think deserves to be on the top of this list.

The movies on this list - from classics to more recent titles - embody the art film aesthetic by blending intellectual concepts, psychologically-driven narratives, and striking visuals with unconventional and even idiosyncratic storytelling methods, acting styles, and camera techniques.

Furthermore, each utilizes the language of horror, either by emphasizing scenarios based in fear and terror, or else carrying on the Grand Guignol tradition of shocking violence, usually to surreal, absurd or even comedic effect. In most cases, these films would not be considered "scary," at least from a conventional sense; in most cases they are concerned with unnerving or unsettling the audience.

Note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather a general overview and a starting place for anyone new to the subgenre, or anyone simply looking for some damn good horror movies.

This entry may have some of you scratching your heads: it was made by a major Hollywood studio, starred big name actor Jack Nicholson, and was based on a bestselling novel by Stephen King. Despite these mainstream considerations, director Stanley Kubrick produced a visually-striking, unconventional and difficult movie - a big budget Hollywood art horror film, in other words.

The director took King's basic premise and made it his own by hollowing out the book's core family dynamic and casting Nicholson's Jack Torrance as an all-around f*ck-up and a monster long before he entered the haunted Overlook Hotel. The entire cast delivers what can only be described as stilted performances, with lines delivered in this hypnotically unnerving, sing-song fashion. And in this way, the audience is not watching madness unfold from afar; rather, they're smack in the middle of it.

Another studio film starring big name actors, namely James Woods and Debbie Harry of Blondie fame, Videodrome is almost defiantly unconventional from the get-go. Body-horror master David Cronenberg made this film following the success of Scanners, a 1981 indie hit of sorts that featured a more straightforward, slow-burn plot.

The director pretty much throws logic out the window with this one, beginning with what appears to be a mystery narrative that quickly spirals into surreal and downright weird territory. With strange, puffy-looking practical effects and gore plus an emphasis on rough sex, torture, and death (inspired by the writings of William S. Burroughs) Videodrome is about as anti-mainstream as a mainstream movie gets.

There is a story moving Suspiria along, but it hardly matters when compared to the spellbinding, hyper-saturated visuals on display, creating, as Wikipedia notes, "a deliberately unrealistic, nightmarish setting, emphasized by the use of imbibition Technicolor prints." Adding to this atmosphere of dreamlike dread are the imposing sets, which in addition to featuring a sumptuous color palette, also subtly showcase doors with knobs much higher than they should be, giving the impression the adults populating the screen are children.

The violence in Suspiria is quite graphic at times, but each death set piece is executed with the same finesse as the ballet moves being taught in the film's fictional dance academy, creating something closer to high art than mere murder sequences.

Many of David Lynch's works straddle the line between horror and neo-noir (Lost Highway, Mullholland Drive, even Twin Peaks, especially the original series finale), but his first feature film definitely belongs to the horror genre. Presented in sumptuous, grainy black and white, the narrative concerns Harry Spencer (Jack Nance), who drifts through a sooty industrial landscape seemingly without purpose - until, that is, he's left to care for a horribly disfigured child he fathered with his sometimes-girlfriend (a child which does not appear to even be human). The mundanity of Harry's apartment soon gives away to surreal, nightmarish visions and hallucinations, sometimes involving the now infamous Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near).